Section 192.031 of the Texas election code says that political parties must certify their presidential and vice-presidential candidates for the November ballot no later than 70 days before the general election. It says, “A political party is entitled to have the names of its nominees for president and vice-president placed on the ballot if before 5 p.m. of the 70th day before presidential election day, the party’s state chair signs and delivers to the secretary of state a written certification of the name’s of the party’s nominees for president and vice-president.”[…]At 2:30 pm Texas time, August 27, Kim Kizer of the Texas Secretary of State’s elections division says neither major party’s certification has been received in the Elections Division. The Executive Office of the Secretary of State refers all questions back to the Elections Division.

This year, neither the Democratic Party nor the Republican Party obeyed this law.

In a press release sent from Bob Barr 2008, Russ Verney said, “Unless the state of Texas violates their own election laws, Congressman Barr will be the only presidential candidate on the ballot,” adding that “Texas law makes no exceptions for missing deadlines.”

The source referenced is Ballot Access News Richard Winger’s online resource for all things election. His final paragraph in the post pretty much sums up my opinion on the subject:

In 1988, the Democratic and Republican Parties missed a similar Indiana deadline. Lenora Fulani sued the State Election Board to force the Board to enforce the deadline. The 7th circuit ruled that Fulani did have standing to file such a lawsuit. Fulani v Hogsett, 917 F 2d 1028 (1990). However, the 7th circuit also said that Fulani waited too long to file her lawsuit. The implication is that if she had filed the lawsuit promptly, it would have been successful; or, more likely, the Indiana deadline for the major parties to certify their nominees might have been held unconstitutional. Fulani in 1988 was the only ballot-listed presidential candidate other than the Democratic and Republican nominees. This year, the Texas Libertarian Party and Bob Barr are the only ballot-listed presidential candidates on the Texas ballot, so the Texas Libertarian Party could, if it wished, bring a lawsuit. However, the result of the lawsuit would probably be to get the deadline declared unconstitutional; no court would order that Obama and McCain be kept off the ballot.

And that, after the deadline has passed. I think we need to ask the question, did they get in before the deadline, and the website just wasn’t updated; or after it, and the law was violated? Based on Wingers research, it looks like the answer is ‘after’.

“The law is clear, and it was clearly not followed,” says Verney. “The Texas Supreme Court was emphatic when it stated that the law ‘does not allow political parties or candidates to ignore statutory deadlines . . .’ Senators Obama and McCain did not file by the deadline; therefore, Texas should abide by the laws it created. No political party or candidate is above the law.”

5:20 Ernie Chambers 2nd appearance; discusses his case against god; omnipotence & omniscience precludes service. the case was brought specifically because courts should be open to any body for any reason (the way the law reads in Nebraska) he goes through a few of the counts against god listed in the lawsuit.

18:40 Catha Pollitt, flocking to faith; Obama’s complete betrayal of the constitution, with his announcement to continue the faith based initiative.

She qualifies her bile with her intention to continue her support for Obama. I find this blind subservience to any political faction sad & disgusting.

Neo-Nazis protesting on women’s equality day. Only Turkey has a smaller percentage of people who accept the proof of evolution than the US. Evolution left off list of acceptable low income US education grants. Pope sacks astronomer. Coulter smears Darwin (earns label of coultergeist)

Larry Lerner representing the Fordham Foundation and the report he co-wrote www.edexcellence.net on science standards in the classroom. The discussion revolves around the problems of setting and maintaining education standards, and the evolving nature of creationism.

Kristen Lems & Dan Barker sing The Preacher & the Slave

Freethinkers almanac.

There are those who say Dawkins goes too far in his attack on religion. That he fails to understand the true nature of religious mystery; that his criticism relies on a parody of faith that he himself set in place, and that people do not take seriously anymore. those who make that objection tend to belong to the mild kindly end of the religious spectrum. these days we should be in no doubt of what the other end of the spectrum is like and we might remember that no social structure ever gives up power because it wants to. If some parts of the christian church are decent and tolerant today, it is because the crusaders and inquisitors and witch burners have been shamed and stripped of their authority by the great critics of religion, some indeed who belonged to the church itself. But all of whom were accused in their time of going too far. -Philip Pullman

“we don’t trust numbers to build up a cause; rather we look at principles, to the truth and the right.” -Elizabeth katy Stanton

Your family went on a holiday, and you are the one whohas all the back pain. That kind of stuff happens to meall the time. Other people can go on a holiday, have fun,come back somewhat tired but okay. But you and mepractically die if we try to even enjoy ourselves one bit.

– Written by a friend with a Chronic Illness

I get stir crazy sitting around the house. I just want to go somewhere and get out. This neurosis of mine drives The Wife nuts in turn, because she’s out all day and just wants to relax. She suggested that I go with her to pick the children up from her mother’s, a trip of more than eight hours in the car each way, and I balk at the thought of all the pain the car trip will cause.

I don’t know what it is that causes my back, hip and leg pain, but it is one of the contributing factors to my disability. I cannot sit in a regular chair for more than an hour without being in pretty intense pain down the back side of my left leg. Sitting in a car for any length of time can cause the pain to expand from the back of the leg to both hip joints and my lower back. Frequently, exiting the vehicle is a rather lengthy process of re-establishing feeling in my legs and relieving the pressure points in my back. Then it is a process of several minutes of determined walking to work out the pains in the hips.

I felt I needed to go with her anyway. The Mother-in-law was watching the kids, and she was going on her Alaska cruise the day after we left her house. It was a rare chance to tell her to have a good time in person, see the kids for the first time in a few weeks and get out of the house.

The first day of driving went pretty good. I drove for about 4 hours, stopping every hour to walk around. After I started hurting so bad I couldn’t concentrate on the road properly, I handed the wheel over to The Wife and just tried to cope. When we got to Mom’s house, I was so sick from being in pain that I could barely manage a “hi and good luck,” ate a little something to buffer the pain medication (even though I wasn’t hungry) and fell promptly asleep.

The trip back home the next day was torture. I woke up in pain from the stiff mattress. The car was so painful that I handed over the wheel within the first hour. I basically stood on the floorboard, forcing my lower back into the seat (which seems to shift the pain, making it more manageable) for the entire trip. I’ve been back for two days, and I’m just now feeling like myself again. I hadn’t noticed the tiredness until this trip. I’ve slept 10+ hours every night since we got back, and I’m still exhausted.

What a vacation.

Do people ever accuse you of ‘faking it’? I get that all the time.

– Question from a fellow sufferer

The Wife used to give me trouble about my allergies because I missed a lot of work. We live in Austin and as the locals will all tell you If you don’t have allergies, live here five years and you will. She developed allergies a few years ago and she has apologized for harassing me about missing work for allergic symptoms ever since.

My sibs on the other hand wouldn’t be so direct as to tell me to my face that I am faking it, they just don’t invite me to do much since I applied for disability. One of my sisters accused The Wife of faking her nightshade allergy a few years ago because we wouldn’t go eat where she wanted to eat. We still haven’t forgiven her for that.

You can chose your friends, but you only wish you could chose your family.

But nothing in the trailer surprises me. Looking forward to catching I.O.U.S.A. this Thursday. For those of you who might doubt the size of the monetary problem we face, here’s a Presidential candidate weighing in on the issue…

I’ve been worried about this subject since before America: Freedom to Fascism aired; I started buying and selling silver because of it. This is the reason why the War on Terror can’t run for a hundred years, no matter what John McCain may say; and it’s the reason why none of Obama’s societal changes stand a chance of working. The debt is the 900 lb. gorilla in the room. Time to talk about it.

Mea culpa review 2018. I have eaten a Big Bowl of Crow since publishing this and other thoughts on many subjects. This is yet another post where my own lack of foresight made the article virtually useless; which ought to give anyone pause who thinks they know what the future holds on any subject, especially when it comes to murky subjects like money and finance. Not understanding that Youtube links might not function properly as the internet evolves and changes, I never bothered to tell even myself what it was the youtube links went to. Going back through these articles I’m left with having to guess my own mental states and projections from the time to piece together what it was that I thought I was saying with the various links that no longer work. So it is with money, especially hard currency, which you have to be able to barter for goods in order for it to have any value at all. When no one takes the silver you have, you might as well throw it away or sell it to a smelter for silver weight, because it has no other value aside from what it is made of. It certainly has no relation to the value stamped on it. This is true of silver coins whether they are officially minted with ridiculously low values on them, or privately minted with ludicrous values on them that no one will honor.

That doesn’t necessarily change the value of questioning debt and spending which can’t be sustained, such as what we spend on healthcare and the military in the United States, but it does change the calculation as to the value of spending on children and parents so as to assure that their dependents grow up understanding the value of society and the benefits of it.

As for the link to the Bob Barr video, or what groundshaking thing I thought it said, that is lost to history unless some other sleuth wants to track it down and find out for themselves. I did find a link to the blog his campaign maintained at the time and linked it under the broken youtube shortcut. That will have to do. I wish you luck, time traveler.

28:30 Interview – William Lobdell, He had faith in his job Discusses the website http://www.whydoesgodhateamputees.com and faith healers like Benny Hinn. (Where are the ambulance chasers? Why isn’t there a lawsuit for fraud from faith healers?) Trinity broadcasting telling people to charge their contributions even if they can’t pay their debts. (apparently god wants you to be a debt slave)

Philip Paulson, atheist in foxhole, his 17 year fight against the Mount Soledad cross. His case has since been taken up by Steve Trunk. Terminal cancer sufferers should all look to this man as an inspiration. I want to have the energy he has, and I don’t have cancer.

I promised my best friend, while we were sitting down for lunch on my recent birthday, that I would flourish some poison penmanship if I didn’t at least receive a phone call from my blood relations this year. Mother has at least called in previous years, whether she understood the implications of the call or not.

I even mentioned the subject later, when my fellow former S*T*A*R members surprised me with chocolate cake and other goodies (Mark, keep that elbow immobile. Mr. Humor with the White Elephant gifts…) before the Wife and I headed out for our movie marathon.

The children were upset that they were going to miss my birthday, because grandma (The Wife‘s Mom) wanted to see them this summer, and the only available week was the week of my birthday. But my brothers and sisters…? Well, they were watching Da Boys in Central Park (with my Mom, as well. At least Mom confessed) and hadn’t thought to trouble me with the knowledge that they were all getting together. On my birthday. To watch a concert. In New York City.

…Without me.

Sure. I don’t fly these days. I get vertigo and headaches and the list goes on. Plenty of excuses to go around. But not to even tell me…?

What a burn.

But, every time I started to write this post, something important that I was missing kept bothering me; something I was missing, that I didn’t show proper appreciation for at the time.

Two groups of friends took time out of their busy days to drop by and drag me out to have fun. The Wife and I had a great time watching films that we had put off seeing all summer. The Children brought me gifts, and the Daughter may never speak to my family again, she’s so outraged.

I have friends that care. I know that they care because there isn’t much that I can do for them in return for their kindness. They aren’t kissing up to me looking for favors. I have a wife that I love and who still loves me after 20 years, and I have children who care more about my status in the family than I do.

What else could you ask for on your 45th Birthday?

(Shut up, Id. Tickets to an LLB concert in Central Park were never offered, were they? And that boxed set of SG1 is being delivered. So pipe down back there.)

If you are prepared to watch a Rock Opera, and if you are prepared to listen to Abba music for an hour and 48 minutes, then I highly recommend this film. If either of those two conditions don’t apply to you, stay away.

I found this film to be a nice trip down memory lane, reminding me of why I liked Abba all those years ago, and marveling at how the songs were worked into to the theme of the play/movie.

I’m glad that the leadership on the film chose actors that could sing, instead of requiring that they be Pavarotti’s that try to act. Yes, there are some rough edges on the soundtrack; but then there are some rough visual edges on the actors as well.

All in all it made for a real feeling film that pulled you into the world it portrays, at the same time bringing back the emotion of being 17 and in love for the first time, again.

Humor may be in the eye of the viewer, but the only way to explain the panning this film gets is judging it in context with the time it was released. Whitewater and the Clinton impeachment.

In hindsight the film becomes even funnier. At least Tricky Dick understood when he was an embarrassment to the nation, and himself; and didn’t keep trying to pretend he wasn’t a disgraced President.

If only ‘W’ had employed teenage dogwalkers. Ah, the times they are a-changing.

Speaking of ‘W’…

Caught the trailer for ‘W’ before watching Pineapple Express on Monday (that film would have been funnier if I had been properly motivated) I can’t imagine how this film will fair considering that it’s airing even before the subject leaves office; although they aren’t advertising an actual air date yet. Looks like it will be funny. Is it supposed to be?

A few days ago, Bob Barr’s election campaign established a goal for their ambitious “60 seconds for Bob” promotional campaign as “Join a Bob Barr Meetup!” In response, I wrote a note to them (which went unanswered, not that I mind) explaining why I won’t be attempting to spend that 60 seconds for Bob.

Today, Austin Bookcrossers informs me that they have re-opened their meetup group. In the process of writing a response, I got to wondering “didn’t I blog on this issue…?“

I mean, the reason I don’t (and won’t ever) participate on meetup.com was a long painful decision reached over the course of several months. There’s an entire section of the forum archived at meetup.com, to this day, that goes into great detail as to why the membership at meetup.com was going to bail out, and why a great many of us were never going to return.

The local libertarian group has been bugging me to join, virtually since the day I deleted my meetup.com membership and watched the two groups I had organized get flushed down the bit bin, but I never thought to elaborate on why I won’t do the meetup thing.

When I first ran across meetup.com, it was related to a political event. If I remember correctly, Howard Dean used it extensively to promote his candidacy in 2003 (in fact, he should have been the Democrat nominee) The Libertarians followed suit, and I consequently joined meetup as part of a promotional effort to get more Libertarians active on the local level.

Or maybe it was a fandom event. Rings on the Range (a local Austin LOTR fan club) was active on Meetup at or about that time. In fact, their meetup page still features a picture of me at one of their meetings (in 2003!) That’s what I call an active group.

Whatever it was, I became a member at Meetup.com. After awhile, I conceived of the idea of getting Austinites together again, to watch SF movies and discuss SF we liked. I had started a Yahoo! group for the Star Trek organization that I had been active in years previously, and there wasn’t an active SF group anywhere in Austin at the time (these days there is Austin Pan-Geeks. You might want to check them out) so I thought “what the heck, let’s see what’s on Meetup.com.”

There were already 20 or so people signed up as interested in SciFi in Austin when I checked on meetup. No one had stepped up to organize the group. After making sure that there were no financial liabilities (that is the important bit of information) I signed up as organizer, and actively started promoting the group. After discovering my love for Firefly, I volunteered to organize the local Firefly group, hoping to roll interest for that show into a large active group of SF fans in Austin.

That dream ended abruptly when Meetup.com’s new management hit upon the idea of charging organizers a monthly fee for their groups. Fan groups run on shoestrings. There is no money available to pay for flashy organizing tools and whizbang graphics. Most of them meet in the back rooms of cheap restaurants for free, because they can’t afford to rent a room to meet in.

Consequently the majority of meetup’s membership objected to the change in policy. But the management at Meetup was adamant that they were going to start charging. When they did, I left, as I had promised to do. As did more than 3/4’s of the membership. What was once a vibrant open community became a virtual ghost town.

…Until the next election rolled around. Elections that are awash with cash to spend on things like organizational tools.

But I’m still not interested, not even if it costs me nothing personally. I like open systems. Systems that invite average people to join and contribute. Meetup is not one of those systems. Consequently, I don’t have the time of day for them, much less the inclination to bolster their ranks and justify their decision to charge for services.